Just one little swallow—and then a hop, skip and jump! Up, up and over! Over the tree-tops, over the glacier itself ... then down into the valley on the other side.
As he floated to the earth there, a strange hush seemed to fall on him. It was the quiet sense of absolute stillness. He walked forward a little way, then stopped in bewilderment. Not a sound—not a whisper of anything. He could not hear even the crunch of his feet upon the greensward. He called out, but somehow his voice sank away into nothing. The trees rustled silently; a great, frothing brook went tumbling down through a bit of woods without a murmur. All was quiet.
A young peasant girl came toward him, leading a horse across the fields—but Peterkin could hear neither the patter of her feet nor the hoof-beats of the horse.
“What ho!” cried he, “I must have gone suddenly deaf! I can’t even hear myself speaking. Here, girl, tell me what’s wrong with my ears?”
The peasant maid halted her horse; she looked at Peterkin with startled wonder. Her gaze settled on his moving mouth—and her eyes grew larger and larger with surprise. Suddenly she snatched a little twig from the branch of a nearby tree, stripped it and commenced to trace queer letters with it in the dust of the road.
“Phew!” thought Peterkin. “She must be deaf herself. It’s a good thing I went to school and learned to read and write!” Then he looked down at what the little girl had traced upon the road—and this is what he read:
“What are you eating?”
Peterkin laughed a noiseless laugh. Then he snatched the twig from her and wrote in reply:
“Nothing.”